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Scholar Profiles

Why you should care about your online presence

Creating and maintaining an online presence is an important step in building your research profile, and in actively promoting your scholarship. Educators and researchers who are interested in seeking wider audiences, connecting with other scholars, or simply communicating their research so it can be discovered and used by others all need a strong online presence.

Top choices: Key online profile tools and resources

These first options are your best bet for getting started in building an online presence. They are free, easy to use, immediately connect you with other researchers, and take very little effort to maintain. Anyone looking to start building their online presence should start here.

Enhancing your presence

These tools take a little more time to get setup and populated, and are worth investing in after you have established your initial presence. Each offers advanced features that afford opportunities to build rich online profiles, to connect with other researchers, or to get credit for contributions.

Why use social media?

Using social media is one of the easiest (and cheapest) ways to actively promote your research and to communicate the implications of your scholarship within and beyond academia. A social media account should be active and engaging, meaning an ongoing commitment to:

  • Communicating with a wider audience, including non-academics
  • Networking and collaborating (or at least following) other researchers
  • Taking control of your message, and representing your professional self
  • Being findable and increasing your willingness to interact online

No matter whether you're using Facebook and Twitter, or blogging tools such as Wordpress or Blogger, social media is an opportunity to express yourself, to document your research project or program, and to share more widely.

Contact

Profile Photo
Richard Hayman
Contact:
Email: rhayman@mtroyal.ca
Phone: 403.440.8518
Office: EL4441K